Bridgegate panel chairs must walk a fine line

Jan. 19, 2014

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It would be easy for partisans to point at Assemblyman John Wisniewski and Sen. Loretta Weinberg and sneer at their political natures.

But to do that would be foolish. Wisniewski and Weinberg, the chairs of the Assembly and Senate special investigative panels looking into the George Washington Bridge access lane closings, are well-versed in the broader issues surrounding the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. And their knowledge lends itself to a critical look at what motivated the lane closings, how they flew under the radar of the top official there and what role politics played in the incident.

To a certain extent, they have been voices crying in the wilderness for years now, complaining specifically about the authority, a well-known patronage pit, and its excesses. And the annoyingly named Bridgegate, the brewing scandal that now involves subpoenas to members of the administration of Gov. Chris Christie and his political team, is most definitely about excess.

Think of what we already know:

• A political appointee to the Port Authority, David Wildstein, apparently orders the closing of access lanes from Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge in September. No one in Fort Lee is notified. Massive traffic jams ensue for four days before the order is reversed. The suspicion is that Wildstein ordered the closings as some kind of political retribution, possibly against the Fort Lee mayor, a Democrat who did not endorse Gov. Chris Christie’s re-election bid.

• Aiding Wildstein was Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff in the Christie administration, who knew of the closings weeks before they occurred and said in an August email to Wildstein: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

• Another Christie political appointee to the Port Authority, Bill Baroni, testified before an Assembly committee that the closures were all part of a traffic study. He, too, was keyed in on emails about the closures and apparently ignored the Fort Lee mayor’s pleas to do something to help alleviate the traffic problems. A letter from the Port Authority to a U.S. Senate committee looking into the closings seems to debunk the traffic-study defense.

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• Christie’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, also was clued in on the lane closures shortly after they happened and at one point labeled the Fort Lee mayor an “idiot” because of his complaints.

• Wildstein, Kelly, Baroni and Stepien are now all jobless.

Without any other detail, these developments deserve a full vetting before the investigative panel. But with 20 subpoenas dropped already and more on the way, expect the political landscape to get even more cluttered.

The first targets of the subpoenas are not the individuals themselves. The Assembly panel wants their documents, a move that makes sense if only because of the history of this scandal so far. It was the emails that revealed the initial contact between Kelly and Wildstein in August and the subsequent efforts to deal with the growing controversy over the lane closings.

Those efforts at spin control pulled in the governor’s spokesman, Michael Drewniak, plus other administration officials, several of whom have also been subpoenaed. If there is one Politics 101 lesson to be learned here, it is that officials should never discuss sensitive political matters in emails. Lest we forget, they are a permanent record.

On Wednesday, the Senate investigative panel meets. It, too, is scheduled to issue subpoenas. How many? To whom? Will they be redundant of the Assembly’s efforts? Or will the Senate focus on a different angle of the probe?

And that brings us back to Wisniewski and Weinberg. Both are experienced legislators, with a history of partisan fervor that could both serve them well in their leadership roles and provide ammunition for those who seek evidence of a political witch hunt.

Expect them to navigate carefully. The risk of overplaying their political hand is great.